


A Secret Shared

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Thinker, The Feeler [7]
Category: Transformers: Rescue Bots
Genre: Abandonment, Best Friends, Burns, Chase and Heatwave have complicated pasts, Childhood Memories, Companions, Danger, Dubious Science, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Emotionally Repressed, Fire, Helplessness, Hurt/Comfort, Insults, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Partnership, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Earth Transformers, Surgery, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 19:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9287159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: Heatwave knew the job was dangerous. Thepointof the job was to make sure the world was just a little bit safer by the time he retired for the night, but there were nights when retiring felt like retreating and even then, it wasn’t safe; the danger of the job lay in wait until he relaxed into the darkness and then it attacked. Somehow it always caught him by surprise.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Enclosed in the story is a headcanon credited to delkios on tumblr. I suggest you read that story first but it's not severely mandatory. If you want to read the headcanon, go [here](http://delkios.tumblr.com/tagged/rescue-bots) and look for "Everything's Alright".
> 
> If you want the short version, it's that some Bots have been part of scientific experiments which dampen their emotions to make them "more objective", but it just makes it hard for them to understand abstract ideas like "fun" or "joy" or "hate". Some of these Bots develop anxiety problems, obsessiveness, perfectionism, etc. Chase is one of these Bots.

Heatwave knew the job was dangerous. The _point_ of the job was to make sure the world was just a little bit safer by the time he retired for the night, but there were nights when retiring felt like retreating and even then, it wasn’t safe; the danger of the job lay in wait until he relaxed into the darkness and then it attacked. Somehow it always caught him by surprise.

His sparklinghood home was collapsing in on him, eaten by fire and hemming him in, eager to swallow him too. He saw Inferno, his trusted mentor, falling back instead of rescuing him, smiling and cackling madly as he abandoned Heatwave to the flames fed by acid rain. Heatwave hollered desperately, begged him to come back, but the crackling and hissing and pounding of the rain was drowning him out, never to be heard again.

He turned wild optics to the ceiling and the acid rain leaking through hit his face, blinding him with uncontrolled tears. Through them, he sought out the team working to save him, but the sirens were fading into the distance, leaving him behind. He was going to die by fire; that’s what this meant. It wasn’t going to be a blaze of glory; it was going to be a scream choked out by a lack of freedom.

He woke up when he hit the floor, trying to beat out whatever flames he could. Melting retardant foam was splattered across the berth and the floor and his frame and he scrabbled at it, mistaking it for energon. It was real, the fire was real, burning somewhere beyond his laughable efforts to keep it out; it was tearing through his suite, it had already consumed his unequipped partner and it was _still coming_ —

When the firemech really did come online, shaking and sick, he struggled to fill his vents and cough simultaneously. He was sure he could still taste the smoke, so he gasped once and held the air stubbornly until his spark started to settle again. His chest felt tight and sore, but the red alerts of his overtaxed system were fading into an ache.

He wasn’t on fire. At least this time he didn’t think he was going to purge. The times he hadn’t been able to wake up before the fire reached him, he had hurled himself at the drain in his washroom like the fraggin’ brave hero he was and then he had to sneak downstairs for cleaning supplies if he didn’t make it in time because he was _not_ going to take the chance of Chase finding out.  He was sure his partner would say something about visiting a counselor of some kind and Heatwave wasn’t about to humiliate himself that way, so why give rise to the opportunity for it to come up? Besides, he didn’t want Chase concerned on his account when it was something so fraggin’ stupid.

It was a little _too_ ironic, Heatwave mused bitterly—a firemech who had nightmares about being burned alive. He wasn’t afraid of his job; it was what could have been, when he was untrained and defenseless. He had always despised being trapped without a defense mechanism; it was partly why he had become a firemech. If he was saving others, he _couldn’t_ be defenseless. The fire from his sparklinghood, however, had been quite literally seared into him; he could remember the twists and turns, all of the wrong moves Inferno could have made that would have left Heatwave helpless, lost forever. Whenever he was sent to rescue a sparkling in the same situation, as he had earlier tonight, he could sense the memory stirring.

So far, it hadn’t prevented him from saving the little ones he found in danger, but who could tell what would happen next time? His subconscious, cruel as it was, seemed to sense the _what-if_ and sometimes the sparkling in Heatwave’s house fire was someone else.

Heatwave couldn’t remember who it had been during this round, but that didn’t matter. He definitely wasn’t recharging any more tonight, so instead he slipped from his berth, barely glancing at the thermal tarp that had been flung across the room, and trudged wearily downstairs for an energon cube. 

*

The medics told Chase that this would benefit his studies, give him a more competent way of thinking. He was ready and eager to learn; he wanted nothing more than to own the pride of his influential creators. He had heard so much about this program, that it changed bots for the better, that he would be one of many in a successful generation.

Once the scientists picked up their tools, he froze, fear prickling through every nervecircuit in his frame. The surgical tools were vibroblades, hissing and dripping coolant that could only have come _from_ someone’s frame. He tried to flinch away, but he was being held down by the well-meaning medics who loomed over him.

It was wrong, it was so very wrong! They smelled like too much cleanser and spilled energon that couldn’t be sponged away and he tried to cry out. He didn’t want this, he had never expected _this_ , but it was too late—they were already cutting him open and he was forced to watch as they bared his spark for their acid-coated probe. It was going to burn him, it was _meant_ to burn him, to pierce through the layers of his spark and destroy any feeling—

Numb, he stumbled onto the street, holding his damaged chest-plate closed with shaking hands. His family and friends were meant to wait for him outside, but he saw them running in the distance, trying to be rid of him. As he looked around, he saw a tangled mix of Cybertronian painted across the building fronts in energon that the medics had taken during his surgery. Slurs glared back at him: _“drone”, “automaton”, “sparkless”, “machine”,_ and his stunted spark burned in horror and shame, leaking through the cracks in his chest-plate and through his fingers to the ground. He followed, landing on hands and knees with wrenching sobs that wouldn’t stop, not until they had wracked his frame out of recharge.

Chase stared up at the ceiling, his frame too strangled by fear to weep, but his face was wet nonetheless; his optics were still leaking, even if he didn’t feel grief. If he could, he would hate this sensation of his frame going through the motions of fear and grief without _feeling_ it in his spark or knowing how it could be calmed. He shot upright in the darkness, stumbling over his thermal tarp as it tangled around his shaking legs, and when he emerged from his berthroom, he wasn’t the only one who jumped.

“What’re you doing up?” Heatwave hissed, but his recovering flinch and wide, pale optics belied the rough tone, making it hoarse. Chase gaped at him numbly, unsure of what to say, and then vented shallowly as his plating rattled. It was an awful noise, far too loud in the quiet, but he couldn’t make it stop.

Heatwave stood with a small shiver of his own, passing it off as the cold as he turned on the nearby orb lamp. As soon as he did, he reeled back, burst out, “Chase, are you _crying?_ ”

“No…or…perhaps I am,” his partner whispered, wiping his hands over the tearstains and then staring at his fingers. “Heatwave, my—my optics are having a response to an emotion I cannot feel. I don’t _understand_.”

Heatwave couldn’t say he did either, so he didn’t reply, moving tentatively forward and putting an arm around his partner. He was whole and safe, Heatwave reassured himself, running the hand across Chase’s shoulders to be sure they remained intact under the pressure. He wasn’t howling or flailing as he was consumed in flame, nor was he crumbling into ashy pieces under Heatwave’s hands…but he seemed to be crumbling in other ways. Maybe Heatwave was crumbling too; the helplessness between them both angered him and broke his spark, forcing him to blink hard.

How were they supposed to be Rescue Bots like this? Heatwave wondered as he led Chase toward their couch. Once they were seated, Chase glanced at him with an expression so openly exhausted that Heatwave was sure his face was much the same. It was a burden they shared, apparently, and there was a ridiculous kind of comfort in that. Heatwave felt, suddenly, that a heavy and loathsome secret had been taken away without his permission. Under any other circumstance, he might have been defensive, recoiling into himself, but from the looks of it, Chase wasn’t going to judge, and secrets between partners had never given fruit to anything good, so Heatwave kept him within reach. Chase seemed content to stay there…

Several joors later, Heatwave came online a second time, warm and mildly disoriented when he found himself still on the couch. _Did I drift?_ he realized in disbelief. He had sworn he wasn't going to recharge again, but he must have. He didn’t recall any more nightmares…The nervecircuits in his arm were tingling from staying still so long, Heatwave realized, starting to shift and drawing in his vents slightly when he found Chase out cold, with the full weight of his upper body on Heatwave’s shoulder. Heatwave was sorely tempted to squirm, but only for a nanoklik. His recharge percentage wasn’t full yet and clearly neither was his partner’s. Companionship seemed to be doing them a little good.

Maybe this kind of defenselessness wasn’t too bad, Heatwave decided, relaxing little by little and letting his mind wander back toward dreamlessness. It was just between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt goes as follows:  
> "This is a really good series! Great character development and creative plots. Will you be doing more with it now that RB has ended? Also have you ever considered a scenario with one (or both) of them having a nightmare?"
> 
> These two break my heart sometimes, okay, but they always put it back together too <3 I hope you liked it! Please drop a comment and tell me; I'd love to hear from you!


End file.
